


Stone Cold Comfort

by welcometolotr



Series: The Distant Ages [8]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Loneliness, Memories, Palantír(i), anguish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welcometolotr/pseuds/welcometolotr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he has thrown his Silmaril out to sea, Maglor sits on the shore and contemplates a different stone, one that has also stayed with him since the fateful events of the First Age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone Cold Comfort

            In my pocket, there was a small stone. I had not touched it in a thousand years except to transfer it to new pairs of pants, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to now. But I picked it up despite my misgivings, and after so long without, it still felt right in my hands. The tips of my charred fingers felt caressed for the first time in a while, and for an instant I felt a great wave of love and warmth sweep over me. And then it turned to fire and pain and sharp sharp sadness, and I dropped it.

It fell to the sand, forlorn, and the dim twilight it reflected shimmered over its surface. I stared at it for a while, cold and shaking and lonely as the sun sank beneath the vast expanse of sea in front of me. At the very moment that the sun disappeared, the gem rippled with light again, unnaturally and with a color I couldn’t describe, because I had never seen it before. Perhaps it was the color of the Void.

I picked it up again, and started talking. I told my palantír what I had just done, where its youngest siblings the silmarils were. I described the deaths of my brothers, my wistful ignorance of what my dear child Elrond was doing. How desolate I felt, and how nice it was to finally just sink into cold sand and sit, finally unable to act on the Oath. I told it that I hated my father, and then I apologized. I don’t hate him. I don’t hate anything. I’m lonely.

I gripped it tighter, and my gem-burned palm suddenly wasn’t burning any more. I opened my fingers to examine my hand, but the burns were still there. As my fingers parted from the little palantír, the burning came back. I squeezed it tight with the little ability left in my hand, and all I could feel was a light warmth. I started talking again.

I foolishly told it the story of a tiny Celegorm who became lost in the woods and met Oromë for the first time. Foolishly, because this stone had been with me when I heard the tale from Father and Maitimo at the end of that very day, and it surely knew the words as well as I did. I told it of all the trouble Findaráto got into as an adult, carrying a small and ever-grinning Artanis around in a shoulder-bag. I described how angry I was when Curufin accidentally broke my flute in trying to discover how it worked, and how ridiculous it all seemed several years later when I had come into my prime as a lyrist. I told it all manner of silly and lovely things, everything I knew and remembered that kept me thinking of Valinor as ‘home’.

I talked and talked, more than I had done in a very long time. But when the dawn came and the sun began to warm the sand, the stone went cold, and I went quiet. But in the distance, I could see the wispy shapes of my brothers and friends and family laughing, together. I saw my father and mother, my grandfather and Lady Indis, my best friend. And I knew it was a lie. 

I put the palantír back in my pocket, to wait once again until I thought I could bear it no more.


End file.
